


Castle, in the Air

by Rhyolight



Category: Castle
Genre: Crime Fighting, Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2012-09-21
Updated: 2012-09-21
Packaged: 2017-11-14 18:18:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 18,524
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/518147
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rhyolight/pseuds/Rhyolight
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He really is, so it's up to Beckett and the rest of the team to figure out who left the body on the archaeological site. Fortunately, the rest of Rick's family are there to help.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This is not the fic you're looking for. This is the fic that I started, apparently, in November of '09, when we were all young with bright eyes and good livers. Not like now. How long ago is that? It was before the kerfuffel about the alleged mosque at Ground Zero. It was before Percy Jackson became a movie, and it was after gay couples were allowed to marry in Ohio and just before they were permitted to marry in New Hampshire. It was before most of the annoying plot developments of subsequent seasons of Castle.
> 
> I wanted to write a normal episode with a murder at an archaeological site (because someday I hope Wanyyta ends up in a book of her own) and I ended up deeply respecting real cops and all writers of procedural crime fiction. It was hard, and sometimes I know that shows; this is not the best thing I have ever written, and if you slog all the way through, you have my respect and my apologies.
> 
>  
> 
> Unfortunately it turned into canon for my canon, and there are things in it I like, so I offer it here and it's probably better than some stuff you could be reading (is there Castle furry fiction, where Rick is an ocelot or something?).
> 
>  
> 
> I don't own the characters who appear on the television show, nor the idea, and that I do not intend to infringe anyone's copyright. The students of Albert Einstein High belong to Meg Cabot, as does the Death Dorm. New York, however, belongs to the people.

Monday, October 18.

"Detective Beckett, I need a favor." It was a rainy late October day, and Castle stood, dripping, next to Kate's desk; not hovering, not in her face. Something he really must want. Kate considered toying with him, but Castle looked marginally more serious than usual. "What is it, Castle? I know better than to give you a blank check. And sit down."

"I can't stay long," he said, sitting down anyway. "My blood-sucking ex-wife/still-publisher and my agent have teamed up against me and I have to go on a book tour."

"Didn't you do that already? I couldn't open a paper or turn on the radio for a month without hearing about Nikki Heat and her hotness. You didn't fool that woman on NPR for one minute, by the way."

"I liked her better than being polite to Good Morning America. Yeah. That was the domestic one. I was able to do the rest of the US in a bunch of overnighters." Kate recalled he had been scarcer than usual for awhile. It had been restful. "They need me to go to Europe for two weeks."

"Am I supposed to offer you condolences?"

"Last time I did twenty interviews in twelve hours, then I went to another city and did it again. A couple of weeks of that gets old real fast. I was so fried I was becoming inappropriately honest. "

"I can't imagine that. Any interviews I'm in are the ones I own. " Except when you get cute.

"Some of the reporters are friends and I'm glad to see them, and some of them I doubt have ever read a book without pictures." He shrugged. "I eat a lot of lunches with my overseas publishers and a lot of dinners with people I don't see very often, which is all right, but it isn't real life. I start craving grapefruit and unfancy restaurants."

"Do you ever get to do tourist things?"

"Not much. But the forced-march publicity tours do give me the ability to go back some other time, on my own. Do you think Nikki Heat would like to go to Venice?"

Kate thought Nikki Heat would really prefer to go to Monaco or the sleazier part of the Riviera, while, she, Beckett, went to someplace in Tuscany where no one had serious domestic disputes. "So how can I help?"

Castle handed her an envelope. "We had tickets for this. Would you mind going with Alexis?"

Kate opened the envelope. The tickets were for a musical that hadn't opened yet. "Percy Jackson and the Lightning Thief?"

"Young adult fiction. Not entirely unlike Harry Potter. Pretty good books, actually. I hear the previews have been fun."

"Why me? Why not Martha?"

"My mother gets her own tickets and she's too much of a snob to go to anything aimed at kids." He shrugged. "I've seen Beauty and the Beast enough times to understudy for it and I don't think she knows what she's missing. But I was also hoping Alex could spend some time with a sane person. I don't like leaving her for this long. Most times she can stay at a friend's house, but that didn't work out this time."

Kate almost asked about his daughter's mother, but remembered in time that Meredith was on the wrong coast. "Well, yes, of course. Maybe we can have lunch once or twice."

"She'd like that. And I would really appreciate it, too. Sane people aren't that common in our neck of the woods." For a fraction of a second his insouciance cracked. She glimpsed a worried, bleak parent. "Some of it's New York, rich people who worry about whether their dog goes to the right school. And Gina ... wasn't good at keeping friends."

"She and Alexis didn't, umm, bond?"

"Oh, like napalm to naked flesh. Any doubts I had about my daughter learning to stand up for herself were resolved by the end of the first three months."

"And you?"

"It took me longer. But she used her feminine blandishments to bewitch me."

It hadn't been too hard on him at the time, Beckett thought. "So when are you leaving on this tour?"

"Friday. Can I give Alexis your cell number?"

"Give me hers, too."

Knowing Castle was entirely out of her life was less refreshing than she had expected. Without his anarchic presence their investigations – even the the kinky one – went smoothly enough, but there was no one she needed to squash, discourage, or reprimand. Ryan and Esposito were cops, like her. They behaved sensibly – as they should – in accord with precedent and best practices. Kate had not realized she enjoyed the sparring so much.

Tuesday, October 26

She would have been kind to Alexis anyway. Castle's daughter had a less irritating version of her father's charm, more brains than made any sense if you looked at her gene pool, and a kind of coltish caution that made Beckett want to protect and encourage her. Kate called her Tuesday, the day before the opening night of the musical. "I think we have a date tomorrow?"

"Ooh, Detective Beckett!"

"You may call me Kate. Unless you want me to call you Ms. Castle?"

"Alexis will do, umm, Kate."

" What should I wear tomorrow? It's an opening night."

"Oooh, Kate!" Alexis was briefly a tenth grader and then reined herself in. "Well, you don't have to do the full black tie thing, and my dad won't be there, so with any luck they won't be taking pictures of us, but pretty fancy would be good."

"Probably won't be taking pictures?"

"Gina. She likes my dad to be in the papers."

"Isn't she in Europe too?"

"No. And where she's concerned, think 'tentacles.'"

Where photographers were concerned, Kate thought 'burka,' but she determined to be sane for Alexis's sake. And she loved musicals with a guilty passion.

Kate was poised and calm when they met the next evening under the marquee of the theater. Curtain time on opening nights was earlier than the regular run; it was just before six when she arrived, having added fancy earrings and a dressier jacket to her detective clothes. She did not feel too terribly underdressed. Alexis was in a group of young glitterati, the cream of the junior celebrities and some of their elders, people whose faces were vaguely familiar to Kate from the papers for sale in supermarket checkout lines. She was used to seeing celebrities in New York, but not to being among them. "Is it all right to stare?" she muttered.

"They'd be disappointed if you didn't. Oh, hi, Mia! Come meet Detective Beckett -"

"Nikki Heat is here?"

"Alexis!" But it was too late, and Kate met a horde who reminded her of her own high school friends, but with whiter, straighter teeth. And much more expensive clothes.

"Are you Alex's bodyguard?" one of the boys asked, slipping a flask into his pocket.

"If you ever try to date her, yes," said Kate. "But I'm off-duty." She displayed her badge. The flask-bearing teenager melted farther away. She was relieved not to see anyone she recognized from Redding Prep. Most of them were from Marlowe, like Alexis, or Albert Einstein, like Mia and her friends.

"How much of Heat Wave is true?" one of them asked.

Actually, that was a good question. Kate so – SO - did not want to discuss Chapter 10 with anyone, much less with anyone under 21. No, not with anyone. "Castle writes fiction. It says so on the copyright page, 'None of the characters or events portrayed in this book...' There are some murders that take place sometimes somewhat like Nikki Heat's. There are real police officers and medical examiners. I don't have a martial arts teacher I see recreationally, no."

Everyone looked disappointed. "So you don't hold out for artistic control?" asked the girl.

"If only I could," said Kate.

"Would you appear on my cable access television show?" Mia's friend gave Kate a card. Lily Moscowitz – Producer. Kate looked helplessly at Alexis.

"She's for real," Alexis assured her. "Lily had my dad on last year. Maybe he could come back and you could tell him how real-life detecting was different from Derek Storm."

"I do that all the time, but he won't listen."

" This is your chance to get a wider audience-you could be such a good role model!" In the end Kate promised to discuss the matter with her boss. The NYPD had done stranger things for good publicity (a photo shoot for Cosmo came to mind).

Despite their friendliness, Kate started to feel old by the time they went into their seats, old and poor. She shook her head slightly, reminding herself that she was a successful grownup and that they were puppies, despite the diamond collars. "A little much?" asked Alexis.

"It's weird how both you and your father read minds."

"Well, I know how you feel. My father actually makes a living, instead of getting it all from a foundation, or being a diplomat. A lot of these kids know they don't know what real life is like."

"I suppose not, if they go to first nights on Broadway very often…"

"I was thinking I ought to go to college somewhere outside of New York, with normal people."

"You'd define that how?"A topic which tided them over till the music started.

Percy Jackson and the Lightning Thief wasn't going to run as long as Cats, but Kate waded through the crowd with a song in her heart, and Alexis took a couple of steps and a twirl onto the sidewalk. "I never knew you danced," Kate said.

"I don't really, I'm too tall and I like doing other things too much. But I still take class twice a week. Did you like it?" Alexis asked.

"Yes, I did. The music was catchy and the plot was fun. Did you like it?"

"The dancing was supposed to be more interesting, from what Dad had heard, but apart from that I liked it pretty well. I liked the book."

"How are you supposed to get home?"

"I was going to take a cab."

"Not by yourself, you won't." Kate signalled for a cab and followed Alexis into it. "I'm seeing you home," she explained. "I know you're street-smart and very competent but I don't want to have to explain that to your father."

"He told me you would."

"Sometimes I hate him."

"He said I should offer you a drink and see if you would stay till midnight."

"Why? So I can turn into a pumpkin?"

"No, he Skypes me around then."

It wasn't Kate's first trip to the Castle home, but it was strange to be there without him. Martha wasn't there. Percy Jackson had not been on her list, so they had not seen her at the theater. "We definitely would have," said Alexis "She loves first nights. Probably because she was in so many."

"I didn't know she was that successful an actress."

"Large numbers of 'first nights' don't imply success the way 'hundredth performance' or 'Five-year anniversaries' do, you know."

"Or even 'second nights?'"

"Exactly."

Alexis's room was neither overwhelmingly pink nor infested with vampires (nor unicorns). She seemed to have more shelf-feet of books than most of the adults Kate knew, but that wasn't surprising. Kate prowled the titles while her hostess pulled her a decaf latte (skinny, hazelnut shot), and they settled down to exchange favorite writers (Donna Andrews, for cheerful murder mysteries) and YouTube sites (Maru, for being a cat). Alexis wasn't much of a fan of her father's writing; at her age, Kate hadn't been, either. It was only a little after eleven when Castle's image buffered onto the monitor. He looked rumpled.

"Hey, babe."

"Hi, Daddy. Where are you?"

"Vienna, right this minute. I gave your regards to Mozart."

"Did you buy me chocolate?"

"I bought all of us chocolate. How was the show?"

"Pretty good. You would have liked the special effects. And there was trapeze."

"Did they ruin the book?"

"Less than I expected. We have a guest."

"Detective! I can see you in the background," Rick said. "Thank you for taking care of my little girl."

"She's a very good hostess, makes a mean latte. Why are you awake?"

"We fly to Dusseldorf in half an hour. See, I'm awake and being productive while all of you are in slothful slumber."

"New York is the city that never sleeps, Castle. Are you having a good time?"

"I can't say I'm hating it here. The pastry is excellent. People talk in funny accents, there are some really nice buildings; I see them from cabs. Am I missing any good crimes?"

"Not really. An object lesson about the dangers of illegal betting. No, I will not go into the details standing here in Alexis's bedroom."

"Thank you, Kate," said Alexis.

"I should get home, myself. You both take care -, no, I'll let myself out. See you next week, Alexis?" They had a lunch date the day before Rick was due home.

Rick's daughter refused to hear of sending her off so coldly and walked her to the door, leaving her father to wait across the ocean with a croissant and coffee. "Thanks for coming with me, and for seeing me home."

"Entirely my pleasure," Kate said. "Get back to your dad. But if you need anything before he gets home, let me know."


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Alexis finds a body. She knows what to do.

Thursday, October 28

She was just out of a meeting with Montgomery the next morning when her phone rang. "Beckett. What's up, Alexis?"

"I just found a dead body, and I wish you would come." Alexis's voice was shakier than Kate could recall ever having heard it. 

"Are you safe? Tell me you're not by yourself." Kate felt like she had whiplash, but the right lines came to her lips. Ryan caught her concern from across the desk and came to attention. Kate put them on speaker phone.

"No," said Alexis, "I'm fine, just --" making a noise of shuddering disgust. "This is what you and my dad do, not me. I'm a on a class trip to the African burial ground they're digging up in Harlem." There was an archaeological excavation going on; Kate had read about it the previous month. Laney was professionally interested.

"So the dead body is not a surprise?" This was the kind of idiot prank she expected from the father, not the daughter.

"No! Not a historical dead body. One of the kind - a leg sticking out of the back-dirt heap. A real one. I told everyone to keep back once we knew he was dead. It's a man's leg. Should we call 911 or is calling you okay?"

Not an idiot prank; her view of Alexis was unstained. "Is that ... all that's there? A leg?"

"I think there's more under the dirt but I didn't want them to mess up the crime scene. Right?" Alexis was sounding more tremulous and Kate decided that, whatever was going on, she deserved adult support.

"It sound like you're doing really well. Can I talk to - who's ever in charge? Your teacher?"

"My teacher is having an anxiety attack," said Alexis, judgement clear in her voice. "I am not gonna go that route. Wait, please, a minute?" There was a pause as she passed the phone to someone else.

"Hi, I'm Wanytta Evans, the site supervisor. Is this the police?"

"I'm Detective Kate Beckett. You have a body down there? This is the site just north of Central Park?"

"Yes, at ***** . Miss Castle saw a leg coming out of the back-dirt pile and drew my attention to it."

"I thought they sifted that stuff," muttered Esposito.

"So you'd like us to come by?" It was a rhetorical question.

"Yes," said Evans, "I don't know what to do with bodies if they're less than a hundred years old."

"My specialty," said Kate. "Let me go through a couple channels as fast as I can; we'll be right there."

The police car drew up next to a couple of other cars parked in front of what appeared to be a half-dug foundation pit for a large rectangular building. There was chain-link fencing around the pit up to a good ten feet back from the edge, which seemed likely to be the property line. Insecure-looking snow fencing leaned uneasily around the actual pit, and blue tarpaulin plastic partly concealed recesses in the dirt, tag ends flapping in the damp, biting breeze. A small quonset-shaped plastic tent rested on some beams in one corner. On the right there was a pile of dirt some twenty feet high, three times as wide at the base, revetted with cinder blocks. A narrow path made of planks trickled up to the top. A small fleet of wheelbarrows was parked nearby.

"Does OSHA know about these people?" Ryan wondered.

"Where is everyone?" Beckett wondered.

Esposito pointed to a wooden shed not far from the foot of the artificial hill, as the door opened. A warmly-dressed black woman came out, closely followed by Alexis. "Oh, good, you're here!"

Beckett tried to calculate Alexis's degree of cool and offered her a hug. The teenager seemed glad to get it. "You're okay?" Kate asked her.

"I'm fine. Just surprised. Detective Beckett, this is the site supervisor, Wanytta Evans. Detective Beckett, Detective Esposito, Detective Ryan."

Kate and the supervisor shook hands. They were about the same age and height; in something less Army-surplus/archaeological-chic, Evans might have been more than pretty. Right now she was worried and unhappy. "Thanks for coming. Miss Castle is worth about ten of her teachers, even if she was wandering off during the tour."

"It runs in her family. Both the solid sense and the wandering. Let's see this leg."

It was a leg, all right. Wearing a shoe and a sock, pants-cuff catching dirt, it stuck out of the dirt pile about six feet from the top. "I was still listening to what you were saying, Ms. Evans, but I wanted to see something besides Amanda's back, so I walked around to here, and I could see something outlined against the dirt that just didn't look right. And there wasn't any tape on the path."

"So she walks up there, and comes back down, and in the middle of a thrilling explanation of African burial customs she puts up her hand and asks if I knew that there was a man's leg in the back dirt."

"I thought archaeologists used screens and sifted stuff, " said Esposito. "Discovery Channel."

Evans nodded. "That was about what I said, but she asked if I would mind having a look. At this point, her teacher was about ready to send her back on the subway but since Miss Castle is polite and appears to have her wits about her, I said I would look, and then all hell broke loose."

"I'm sorry my class behaved like babies."

"_You_ have nothing to apologize for. Your teachers need some serious chill pills. We managed to keep most of them off the dirt pile."

"Amanda said she was going to faint. Ms. Avogadro was, not Amanda. Anyway, we called you and Ms. Evans got everyone into the site hut and made coffee."

"Where they are now calling and texting everyone they know. Except my boss, unfortunately," said Evans. "May I call him?"

"Yes, Ms. Evans, please call your boss. Ryan, Esposito, call the crime scene people, and then go in and start interviewing the teachers. Not that it sounds like they'll know anything, but it might make them feel someone cares. And then we can send them home," said Beckett. "Alexis, you should probably go join them."

"I could stay here."

"Not much to see for awhile."

"Better than the claustrophobia and the drama in there. Over-caffeinated teenagers."

"The agreement is only for ONE Castle to shadow me, and he's in Dusseldorf."

Alexis looked sad. "Just stand outside and smoke or something," suggested Evans. "Or rather, don't. But you know, hang around. I couldn't stand it in there either."

In the end Alexis went and read a book in the police car. Beckett felt bad, but she could not square interrogating what she had for witnesses with the presence of even the best 16-year old in the city. Once Lanie and the rest of the CSI types arrived, Alexis helped string yellow crime-scene tape around the fencing. It took most of two hours to get to the point where the rest of the body could be exposed, by which time Ms. Avogadro had recovered her composure and taken the students back to school. Beckett suspected a lot of helicopter parents would be bothering their therapists, but the kids seemed to be the usual resilient horde. Kate promised to let Alexis know if they found out more of the dead man's story. "You did a great job trying to secure the scene," the detective told her. "Thank you for being a responsible citizen." Alexis looked pleased and scurried off to catch the rest of her field trip.

"Black male, dead about four days, as far as I can tell from here. He's about mid-twenties, seemed to be in good health till someone stabbed him." Lanie looked somber. "I don't need to tell you how hard it rained Monday; if he was killed here you may have trouble finding the spot."

"Christ, DNA all over the place…" murmured Evans. Kate looked at her. "No, I'm not happy someone has died recently, but it's my job to stand up for the very dead. "

"Interesting way to put it," said Beckett.

"These people couldn't speak up much while they were alive -- or in the 1850's, when someone ran a sewer line through here even though it was marked on some city maps as a slave burial ground."

"Harsh," remarked Esposito.

"We found some bones replaced on top of a coffin lid, right next to the pipe, so they knew there were bodies here. This was the same time as the city was moving some white cemeteries to the suburbs. Though, to be fair, those were far more recent burials with active, rich descendants. The most recent graves we've found here seem to be late eighteenth-century."

"Until today."

"You can't really call that a grave. Even the slaves were given a little more dignity."

"I take it you don't recognize him?" Beckett asked.

They looked at the sad, damaged, contused, puffy face. "I am not sure I'd be able to tell if I had known him or not," Evans said.

"Let me take him back to my place," said Lanie. "We can get some sketches without the postmortem developments."

"Dr. Evans - " began Beckett, as they sheltered in what Evans called the 'site hut.' The other woman shook her head.

"Wanytta will do, I haven't got my doctorate yet."

"You said you were calling your boss. Who's in charge, who is he working for?"

"Joshua Werkowski, the principal investigator. He's a professor at New York College, and he said he'd be here as soon as his class was over. This dig is kind of a hybrid; the city is responsible by law for archaeological surveying of an area before it's developed, which is usually handled by cultural resource management firms, but he's an expert on the history of this part of the city so it's run as an academic project too. Unfortunately, it makes the work slower."

"What exactly are you trying to do?" Beckett asked.

"To begin with, we'd like to move all the burials out of the way of the new building. We want to salvage as much information as we can from the way the people were buried, what they were buried with, and Mike hopes to have a chance to do a lot of research before they're reburied. We are trying to extract DNA from as many individuals as we can, to see if were can find any family relationships and maybe find out where in Africa these people came from. To try to see what their lives were like and what they died of."

"You can find that much out from remains this old?"

"Sometimes, if the conditions are right. But it isn't to everyone's taste. Some of the community thinks letting them rest in peace means reburial as soon as possible would be more appropriate. I'd rather the dead had a chance to tell us all they can. They couldn't say much during their lives."

"That sounds very reasonable."

"It's expensive. That's why the city ignored them when so many of the buildings around here went in. They were only slaves," Evans said, with carefully deadened emotion.

"But they can't just do that, not these days, surely?"

"I've seen it happen to Indian burial areas. The dead need advocates, Detective. They can still tell us a lot about who they were when they were alive, if we want to hear it. Don't you agree?"

"I do. But the dead I work for are more recent; I'm supposed to find out what stopped them speaking for themselves. Do you have any idea why someone would put a body in your- your tailings?"

"We call it a back dirt pile, or maybe a spoil heap. The only reason I can think of is that we're available. The gate was locked, but the fence isn't much good; you could pull right up to it, get the body through a gap like that" (she pointed at one of the ripples along the bottom), "and there's a lot of room to bury him. I think the rain brought down a section of loosely-piled dirt and that's how the little red-haired girl was able to see the leg. We don't spend much time staring at the back dirt; I can't guarantee we would have seen him before we dumped another barrow-load over him."

"What happens when the dig is over? And when will that be?" Beckett asked.

"The city will use the pile to backfill the site. I wish we could have till next summer, but I doubt that we'll be allowed to stay much past January. I can't imagine the a guy with a bulldozer wouldn't have noticed someone in the backfill, but I suppose it's possible. I have to say, I'm troubled. You think someone got clever and put him here because he was African-American?"

""It seems like a long way to go to make some kind of statement. I don't suppose you saw any tire tracks, or anything else unusual some morning this week?"

Evans shook her head. "I was away last week, and we gave the crew a long weekend. They've been going flat out since mid-June. No one mentioned anything yesterday. When do you think we'll be able to get back to work?"

Kate hoped it would be soon, but she equivocated and went to talk to the evidence team.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> An imam and an evangelical Christian walk into a morgue...

Later, Thursday

Lanie called her before five that afternoon. The tox screens weren't done yet, but she was reasonably sure the body in the back dirt had died as a result of two massive stab wounds. Only a trace of blood had been found near him and none on the parts of the site they had been able to test. Evans's archaeological DNA would be clean. Finding out the victim's identity had not taken very long at all; Missing Persons had a report of someone who fit the victim's description. His family hadn't seen him since Sunday night. On Tuesday, Joseph Bankery failed to show up in the social work class he was taking at New York College; his professor called his home and his roommate called his mother, who called the police.

"That's Joey, yeah. Damn." The victim's older brother, a slender man in a nice suit and a clerical collar, put his face into his hands for a minute. "How will I tell Mom?"

"I'll come with you, if you want," said his companion, a much older white man, also wearing a nice suit, with a lapel cross. His voice was kind, but he looked and sounded like all the evangelicals on TV and Beckett had to turn off a reflex mistrust.

"She hates ministers," said the victim's brother, trying to laugh as he wiped his face. The other man smiled, too, still looking sad.

"I'm Detective Kate Beckett, in charge of your brother's case. I am so sorry for your loss."

The brother wiped his hand on his handkerchief before offering it to Beckett. "I'm Hamid, formerly Henry, Bankery, the pastor of the Liberty Islamic Gathering in Harlem. This is my colleague, Pastor Jim McElroy of the Light of Christ Baptist Fellowship, also of Harlem. My brother was doing an internship at his church." " He turned to McElroy, who shook hands with Kate.

"Pleased to meet you, Detective Beckett, except for the circumstances. Can we sit down? He's not doing too well." Beckett took them out of the morgue to a more comfortable, more private room, and brought them coffee.

"So glad I'm Muslim, not Mormon, I don't see how they can do ministry without caffeine," said Bankery, giggling a little as tears slipped down his face. He took the coffee like a lifeline to sanity. There was always Kleenex available in the interview rooms. Kate handed him some and decided to let him recover for a few moments. 

"So, Pastor McElroy, Joseph was working with you? When did you last see him?"

"This is Thursday night, right? Must have been… last Sunday, about five pm. He was doing the Bible study and the children's services with Mark, but he didn't show up on Tuesday or yesterday, I remember."

"We - he and Zenaida and I - had dinner together at my mom's on Sunday. " The dead man's brothe wiped his eyes. "Joey had someone to meet about eight-thirty, so he left instead about, oh five after eight."

"Do you know who he was going to see?"

"Definitely not a girlfriend!" Bankery dissolved into full-on sobs.

"Henry Ha-Meed Bankery -" the Baptist started. Then he sighed and hugged his friend and shook his head. "I'm sorry, Detective."

"It takes people this way, sometimes."

"They've been through a lot lately, he and his brother. I don't know if you know that homosexuality is kind of a stigma in some parts of the African-American population-?"

"I've heard it can be particularly tough. Was Joe gay?"

"I moved up to Harlem about ten years ago, met Joe and Henry when they were in high school. It was not exactly a surprise to me when Joey came out."

"Three-dollar bill," said Bankery. "It's been like one long fight with our mother even trying to discuss it. And then his boyfriend died last year. I was just surprised she didn't kill him then."

"The wounds on his body indicate whoever attacked him was quite strong, and probably taller than your brother was."

"Well, that's one person ruled out. Their mother's a tiny little thing."

"Did your brother have any connection with the archaeologists?" Kate asked.

"Not as far as I know."

"Forgive me, Pastor McElroy, but you said he was interning with your church? I hadn't heard Baptists were any more accepting of homosexuality than -"

"Generally less than I think Christ would want us to be, yeah. But I know a goodly number of my congregation - the street kids and the addicts - don't fit too well into traditional roles. I figure my job's to keep them alive and remembering to be kind to one another." He smiled briefly at Beckett. "I hope that's a look of pleased surprise, Detective."

"It's not really my business either way, but the city would be much easier to police if that was what more people tried to do."

"We can't know God's purposes, and we can't completely ignore what people know about themselves. I believe the Bible tells us a lot about the ways God's people have tried to hear Him, and then Jesus came and rewrote it all. Said to love one another and leave the details to his Heavenly Father. I am never going to understand what it is to be gay – or black or Muslim or a woman or a Red Sox fan. But I know very well that I am expected to treat them the way I would want to be treated." He shrugged."My wife is a Red Sox fan. She lets me know when I'm too far off base."

"Jim has given me a lot of help in my ministry, too," said Bankery. "I wasn't expecting to become a pastor at all, I was studying American history and I met this nice Muslim girl… She knows I love - loved, my brother and she loves him too. We're trying to make a place you can be Muslim and American and not bring Allah down to someone who cares more about what you do in your bedroom than what you do outside of it. And Pastor McElroy's congregation and mine try to recognize what our God gives us in common, try and work together."

"That can't be easy," said Kate.

"It's not," they assured her. 

"So Joseph was working with the street people in my congregation, trying to make sure they were lined up with whoever could help them and doing whatever he could to help them himself," McElroy continued.

"Did he have any enemies you know of? Any arguments lately?"

Hamid Bankery looked at the older man. "You were seeing more of him than I was."

"And Mark – that's Mark Billings, my associate pastor – saw more of him than I did. You'll want to come see where we work, Detective?"

"I certainly will, Reverend McElroy. First thing tomorrow?"


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Returning to the scene of the crime, unquote

Thursday evening)

"I don't have permission to put Skype on my office computer, Castle. Nor will I scan or fax you the results of the autopsy. And I know you're on a cell phone, which is not secure, no matter what you have installed on it. You have to wait till you come home." Loud squawking came from Beckett's telephone. Indignation, sulking, blandishment in rapid succession. Kate looked at the instrument patiently, knowing that silence was within a fingertip's reach. "I hope Alexis isn't too freaked out?" she asked, when Castle ran down.

"She's great," said Alexis's father, fondly. "Don't you love it that she knew to keep everyone off the crime scene and call you?"

"I wouldn't have expected any less from your daughter. Poor kid probably knew the rules of evidence before she could read."

"Well, just the Miranda warnings, actually. It sounds like a great case." Castle was plainly sorry to be missing it. "You could have the gay angle, if there is one - do many Christian social work students spend time cruising the bars, you suppose?"

"What do you think? You know how many cops and politicians you can run into, right?"

"Only from the news."

"Well, just think of the general population and add leather."

She could hear a small squawk and Castle continued. "The New York College angle -"

"At least he didn't live in the Death Dorm."

"The Muslim angle, but it doesn't seem like he was much involved with his brother's, umm, congregation? From what you said I would have expected the Pastor-Imam to be in a lot more danger than a social work student. Religious extremists?"

"Don't even whisper the T-word. Don't let it even cross your mind."

"And the Baptist angle, and then there's the archaeologists. I've heard what they're like. Unspeakable rites."

"Really?" asked Kate.

"No, they just drink a lot."

"Not the Baptists."

"No. Not usually. What did you say the supervisor's name was?"

"Sarah Elizabeth Evans. Only she calls herself Wanyyta, with two 'y's.' "

"Oh yeah. I've met her a couple of times. You know she's the mayor's goddaughter, right?"

"NO." Beckett exhaled. "No, that didn't come up. To her credit."

" She's from the expensive part of Westchester -"

"Like there's a low end?"

"-Went to Smith, took . and anthropology, quit straightening her hair and changed her name. Then she moved to New Hampshire. I heard her mother lamenting sometime last year that she had broken up with a very nice boy. I hadn't heard she was back down this way. I bet Captain Montgomery knows her. Not a suspect, is she?"

"Kind of early to say. She was not pleased to find a modern body in her cemetery-"

"Archaeologists have standards, you know-"

"-She's helping CSI sift through the rest of her back-dirt pile tomorrow. I don't know when they'll be back to normal there."

"I'll be home in five days."

"I'll try to survive somehow until then."

"Be nice or I'll eat your Viennese chocolate."

Friday, October 24 There would be a lot of legwork, a lot of people to interview. Not nearly enough drinking, in Esposito's opinion, even though he was going to talk to the social work students and the historians at New York College. WAY too much drinking, in Karpowski's opinion, probably because she would be covering the gay bars. But Kate had hardly started for the victim's apartment in Harlem when headquarters called and sent her back to the site of the African Burying Ground. "Come back, boys. We have another body," she said.

"Another one?" Ryan asked.

"That's what they said."

Twenty-two hours after their first arrival, they found the site hut forty feet to the left of its earlier position. The back-dirt heap was now roughly half as tall and twice as wide as it had been the day before. Lanie was standing on the bed of a pickup truck, next to a figure lying on a body bag. She was berating three guys standing nearby with shovels.

"Why didn't you just go ahead and USE the bulldozer?"

"Lanie."

"Hi, Kate. They messed up my corpse."

"It was a really big heap of dirt… I'm betting they were trying to get through it before Thanksgiving."

"You should have let my guys do it," said Evans, joining them with a classic tweedy white nerd. "This is Dr. Joshua Werkowski. Detective Beckett."

"Doctor Werkowski -"

"Just Josh, I'm off-campus. Christ, this is a nightmare."

"Of COURSE you can move her, WHAT, LIKE she hasn't ALREADY been moved? And had her SKULL caved in? " Lanie jumped off the bumper of the pickup. "What I wouldn't give to dope-slap a few people."

"Dr. Parish, Dr. Werkowski." Kate hoped civility would click back on in her severely irked ME.

"Dr. Werkowski, I'm sorry you had to see the NYPD in their 'butcher' mode."

"Wasn't one body enough?" asked the academic.

"Apparently not," said Beckett. "Lanie, what can you tell us about – her? If you can take a deep breath, that is."

Lanie was calm enough. "White female, probably in her seventies, strangled. About a week, ten days ago. With a post-mortem split skull and broken leg, arm, and multiple contusions from being hit with shovels by morons. Found in a different part of the heap from our first vic."

"Whom we have identified," said Beckett, "as Joseph Bankery, a social work student at New York College. Are you all right, Dr. Werkowski?" He looked stricken.

"Why – why would anyone murder a social work student? Why bury him here?"

"If I knew, I wouldn't have to investigate it. Do you have any ideas?"

"No. No. I don't think I know any of the social work students. Do you think it's the same murderer?" asked Werkowski.

Lanie shrugged. "Nothing to say either way. Other guy was stabbed, young, and healthy. I'll run her fingerprints and see if she's in the system."

"Do- do you think you'll find any more bodies?"

"I couldn't say, Dr. Werkowski. How are you doing with the ones in your graveyard?" Kate asked. It didn't seem to ground the archaeologist any; he was plainly upset. "We'll try not to disrupt your work more than necessary, I know you're on a clock here."

"We'll be doing much better now with a clean spoil heap," said Wanyyta, as her boss continued to look horrified. "You'll want to interview the rest of us, now we're back?"


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Homes and householders

Early Friday afternoon: "I'd like to know more about Castle's ideas of unspeakable rites," said Beckett. "The archaeologists looked too cold for much this morning." They had been grubby, in some cases obviously hungover, but well-spoken. She supposed it went with the job. "The boss, however, was another matter. Professors get to stay clean and warm."

"He leaped like a startled fawn when you asked him about his bodies," said Esposito.

"Very poetic," said Kate. "He said he didn't know any one from the school of Social Work, but classes meet in the same buildings and share a cafeteria. And a library."

"Yeah, but motive?"

"You'll have to ask. Maybe historians and social workers have a deep-down vendetta? How far are we from Pastor McElroy's church?"

"A few blocks. Not that far from the vic's place or his mother's, either."

Beckett sighed. "Which do you want?"

In the end, they all went to the small apartment with the small bedroom where Joe Bankery had lived. It wasn't exceptionally neat nor particularly messy, tending more toward reprints of sociology articles than skin mags. His roommate hadn't seen Joe after Joe's departure for dinner at his mother's.

"What do you think happened? Could he have met someone who turned out to be dangerous at a bar or something?" asked Beckett.

The roommate shook his head. "Neither of us had much time for that. We 're older than most of the people in our classes; we just want to get done with our degrees. He usually came straight home from the shelter."

"So not much with the drugs?" asked Esposito.

"Dexedrine once in a while. Around the end of the semester."

"Alcohol?" asked Beckett.

"White zin count? He didn't drink much."

"Did Joe have anyone out to get him?" asked Ryan.

"There was this one woman in our 'Poverty and Women' course, but I think it was an ideological thing."

"Can we have her name?"

"Sure, but she's in Bolivia this semester."

"Do you know if he had anything to do with the History Department?" Beckett asked.

The roommate looked puzzled. "No. Why?"

"I'm trying to understand why he was found on the archaeological site."

"Good place to hide a body? I have no idea. He never mentioned anything like that."

"Do you know much about the place where he was working?" asked Esposito.

"His practicum at the Baptist shelter? We all heard about it in seminar, and of course we complained about our practicums at home. But the church sounds like the real deal. Joe wasn't all that much into religion, but he liked most of the people and they liked him. His boss looks too much like Jerry Falwell, but he was okay. He got into some arguments sometimes, I think; the assistant pastor seemed to think Joe being in school was putting on airs instead of 'working for the Lord.'"

"So you haven't even any weird, silly ideas who might have killed him?"

"Other than his mother, no."

"We keep hearing about her," said Beckett.

"She is a piece of work," said the roommate. "But she has emphysema and isn't going to bury anyone in a pile of dirt." He shook his head. "The way I look at it is– stop me if you've heard this one before – no one had any motive. Joey knew his way around the city. He was pretty serious and kept to himself. He wasn't even angry at his mother, or, " he brought his hands up and made air-quotes, " 'The Man,' no offense, Detective. Detectives. He didn't do drugs or keep women –or men – or rob banks. Or bet on football. He had about as much money as any student, which is to say his future was mortgaged, and as far as I can tell after two pretty intense years, he had no secrets. He was a nice guy."

"So you think he was just at the wrong place at the wrong time?" asked Esposito.

"Worse than usual," said the roommate.

"Any reason you can think of there would be an old lady buried in the same pile of dirt?"

"An old lady? Do you think he killed her?" The roommate was startled.

"No reason to. Do you?"

"My God, no. He took them candy at the shelter. To hear him tell it they were worth all the trouble from the surly drunks and suicidal teenagers combined."

"Was he specially close friends with any one there in particular?"

The roommate shrugged. "You'll want to look at his practicum notes. Sally, Sue, Shelly, I don't know. There were a lot of people through that place."

"Now the mom, I guess, " said Beckett.

"You're not gonna make us go without you, right?" begged Ryan.

"You're scared of a little old black lady on oxygen?" Ryan and Esposito nodded. "What have you heard that I haven't heard?"

"Turns out Pattie – you know her?" Esposito asked. Pattie was a dispatcher. "She's going out with the cop on the local beat and he had plenty to say about her. She throws things."

"Heavy things?"

"Loud things."

But Mrs. Bankery looked forlorn and shrunken when Hamid let them into her kitchen. "My mother, Doris Bankery; my wife, Zenaida. This is Detective Beckett, the one I told you about?"

"And these are Detective Ryan and Detective Esposito, who are working on your son's case with me." Everyone shook hands. The kitchen smelled good, and Zenaida poured them all coffee. "I am sorry for your loss, Mrs. Bankery."

"Thank you. You're going to find out who killed him?"

"I hope so."

"Any ideas?"

"Not yet. Your son seems to have led a good life; it makes it harder sometimes to find out why someone died."

"A good life." The old woman snorted.

"Mama, don't start," suggested Zenaida. Hamid stayed quiet.

"He lived nearby, he visited you, he was in school and doing well, learning to be something society needs," said Beckett. "Pretty good to me."

"You young people don't know much."

"No, ma'am. Your other son here told me you saw him Sunday night?"

"Yeah, he was here for supper. He was a good boy that way, you're right. But I want grandchildren."

" Joseph was in school, wasn't he? Not ready to settle down?"

"That kind of boy don't."

" I'm not here to discuss that," said Beckett. It was hard to ask what kind of person her son had been when his sexuality was such a glaring, ominous presence in the room, but Kate wanted to try. She invited Hamid and Zenaida into the conversation and learned from Mrs. Bankery that being Muslim was worse than being Catholic but not as bad as voting Republican, and not really on the same level as being gay, drug-addicted, drunk, or disrespectful. The old woman did not throw anything except some very pointed remarks.

"I need to be getting back to the Center," said Hamid, after half an hour. "We had the formal service this morning, but in America it works better to offer prayer outside of office hours."

"Well, thank you for talking to me about Joseph. It's hard to lose someone suddenly, particularly like this, but I appreciate your help." Kate said. "I'll be back in touch when we find out more about the woman whose body we found today. In the same place as your son's."

The three civilians were horrified. "Did the same person kill them both?" asked Zenaida.

"We are trying to find out. It would help if we knew whether he knew her. She seems to have been killed a few days earlier than he was," Beckett told them. "I can't show you a picture of her yet. Did he ever talk about an older white woman?"

"Well, yes, of course," said Hamid. "He liked the people he met in the shelter, and he had friends among them. There were several homeless women he had known for years."

"Did you ever meet any of the people he talked about?" asked Beckett. Hamid shook his head.

"I don't visit his church very often, though I see Pastor Jim every couple of weeks to talk about ministry – like supervision, or therapy. Ministers of all kinds need people outside their community to talk to, and we have a standing date for coffee every other Thursday. My brother often joined us, if he didn't have a class or some other duty."

"How about the assistant at Pastor McElroy's?"

Hamid hesitated. "He doesn't seem to need to talk. I imagine he has other confidants."

"He doesn't like Muslims, either," said Zenaida.

"Now, honey -" began her husband.

"I am not going to make nice when it's not true. He's not thrilled about women in ministry, either. I get enough of that at home." She looked at Beckett. "Home religion, I mean."

"This is Mark Billings?" asked Esposito.

"Yes. How Pastor Jim stands him I do not know."

"Well, he's neither a woman nor a Muslim, so perhaps he doesn't see Mark's rough spots," said her husband.

"I had stronger words than that for him before I got devout. Sorry, Detectives."

Kate shook her head. "Please don't apologize for giving us the picture. But your brother-in-law got along with him all right?"

A small silence appeared over the table. Mrs. Bankery pursed her lips. Hamid finally spoke. "They got along... professionally. Because Jim told them to. Pastor Jim said there were things that were no use to discuss."

"They're not, if you read the Bible. Or your Koran," his mother said almost gently. "People don't have to sin. He'd made his choice and the Devil got him. It doesn't matter who killed him; he was dead already."

Kate looked at Hamid, who just looked tired.

"But we don't know that Joseph's sexuality had anything to do with his death, and that's what concerns me, Mrs. Bankery," said Kate, interrupting whatever Mrs. Bankery was inhaling to say. " It's my job not to let murderers run around in New York, no matter what their victims were doing."

They left a little while later. Hamid and Zenaida saw them out. "She loved him, but she sure didn't like him," he told them, looking tired."It makes the grief harder, you know."

"I understand," Beckett assured him.

"You know, though, she's just wrong in so many ways," said Ryan suddenly. " I know Mrs. Bankery doesn't think Catholics are really Christians, but there are a lot of people, some of them Bible scholars, in my church who don't read it that way."

"There are hundreds of thousands of Muslims, in Indonesia and elsewhere, who don't see it that way either," said Hamid. "And people of all faiths who believe in God's mercy."

"And then there are people like me who don't think God worries all that much about who does what to whom how, as much as how kindly we do it," said Zenaida. "But I don't have to tread quite as carefully as my husband. Thank you all for what you are trying to do, for Joey and that woman. For justice."

"Well, that was fun," said Esposito when the house lay behind them.

Ryan shook his head. "You'd think it'd take more to shock me than someone sitting there saying her son was so evil for being gay it didn't matter if he was killed."

"You don't expect it from a murder victim's mother," said Kate.

"Too early to go drinking, bro."

"I'd like a nice long shower, myself," said Kate.

"One of my second cousins was gay and out," said Esposito. "You ever hear 15, 20 people talk until they were literally hoarse? With the shouting in between? That was Christmas in about 1998, '99, at my grandmother's."

"Which cousin is that?" asked Ryan.

"The one who died when the towers came down. Firefighter."

"Oh, Christ."

Beckett looked at the time. "It's 3:30. Go back to the station, write up the interviews, see if there's an ID for our new corpse. Both of you. I'll go see McElroy and try to meet the associate. I won't stay long; we'll have to go back when we have a picture of the Jane Doe."

"You sure you want to go there by yourself?" asked Esposito.

"The associate pastor who doesn't like women ministers, right?" Ryan said. "I wonder if he's any better about woman cops."

"Guys, this is a church, not an ambush. I'll be fine. He doesn't have to like me."

"All right, we'll see you back at the office," said Esposito.

"Don't take any crap from anyone, all right?" said Ryan.

"Only my friends," Kate assured them.

She went to find the Light of Christ Baptist Fellowship, a picture in her mind of a little storefront with cardboard signs in the window. She barely recognized the place while she counted street numbers. Harlem was not what it had been. The quality of life there had been creeping up for years, along with taxes and real estate prices. McElroy's small church had been functioning long before he came to New York.

"We could never afford this big a place if we had to pay the current prices," the pastor told her. "We're lucky to be in such a central location. This is the child-care center, during the day; at night we sleep about twenty-five women here and another thirty men downstairs. Some of the staff live in the apartments upstairs; we can't afford to pay them much but it's a decent perk."

"This is impressive," Kate said. "Nicest kitchen in New York."

"Well, outside of some hotels, we think so. Mark, can you come over here? Meet Detective Beckett. She's investigating poor Joe's death. Detective, my right-hand man, Mark Billings. And Joanie Marcotte and Twila Garfield, who hold up the kitchen ceiling."

A middle-aged man with mocha skin shook Kate's hand. "Thank you for your service, Detective." He had a West Indian accent, faded after some long time on the East Coast.

"Thank you for yours. How many people do you feed a day here?"

"I'll leave you for now, Detective Beckett," said McElroy. "I'm sure we'll see you again. God bless." He trundled away down the corridor.

"We seat seventy at dinner most nights, and we send our overnight guests off in the morning with a good breakfast and a box lunch. But I do mostly pastoral work; I'm just in the kitchen for the day. Always short of people. We need more volunteers."

"Was Joseph Bankery a member of your staff or a volunteer?"

"He was a volunteer."

"You'll give her the wrong idea, Mark," said the smaller of the women. "Joe was a member of our staff until he decided to get his MSW. He received a stipend from the college for doing the practical work his academic program required, and we were hoping to get him back full-time when he graduated. I'm Twila, by the way. "

" Helpful, to have an MSW on your staff."

Billings shrugged. "There's so much paperwork in getting aid from the city and the state; I suppose he would have learned how to get through it faster. But I think we need the Gospel more than the New York State Laws and Regulations."

"I'm sure you need both," Kate said. "It's hard to squeeze hope out of a bureaucracy. How well did you know Mr. Bankery?"

"Well enough to work with him, but I never saw him anywhere outside of the mission."

"He was a sweetie," said Twila. "A nice guy and a hard worker, not afraid to peel potatoes or fry chicken if that's what was needed."

"Do you know of any reason anyone would want him dead?"

The two women denied it. Billings looked thoughtful.

"Well. I don't like to say. But someone's been killed, now..."

"Please," said Beckett. "Any ideas? Because so far no one has come up with a motive."

"I don't say it's a motive, but some of the people he associated with...not here, of course."

"You're going to have to spell it out for me a little more clearly."

"'The wages of sin is death.'"

"Was he a sinner? I haven't heard that from anyone else," Kate lied, mentally excluding the victim's mother.

"We don't like to say anything here -"

"Mark, you old hypocrite, shut up," said Twila. "He means Joey was gay. But he wasn't what most people would call promiscuous, Detective."

"I don't usually call anyone promiscuous," said Kate. "Do you mean he didn't seem to have a lot of lovers or one-night stands or hookups?"

"That's exactly what I mean. He had a boyfriend who passed on a year ago from some kind of cancer and I know he was still missing him. But there might have been someone new. I teased him one day because he was spruced up, and he was all embarrassed," Twila said.

"Any idea who?"

"I thought it might have been someone at school? He didn't talk much about it here because some people set themselves up to judge -" Twila looked sidelong at Mark Billings.

"Some things are against the will of God," Billings said. He knew for sure, Kate thought.

"Yeah, like backbiting! Joey was the salt of the earth. Go ask the old ladies in the shelter."

"I intend to," Kate said. "Did Joey ever show any interest in the archaeological dig?"

"Oh, the big hole a couple blocks from here?" asked Twila. "I don't think he mentioned it. Not as much as you did, Mark, right?"

"I think it's indecent. They ought to let those people rest in peace."

"I gather they're about to put a building on top of them. Leaving them to be dug into the foundations seems a little harsh to me. I believe they are finding out some interesting history about the slaves' lives, too," said Beckett.

"Nobody in Manhattan 'rests in peace,'" said Twila. "Honestly, I'd rather be buried upstate, if I were after peace. Fewer subways. What about it?"

"Mr. Bankery's body was discovered there yesterday."

All three of the civilians shuddered.

"And the remains of an older white woman were found there today. We wondered if she might be one of your clients."

"How would that fit into your theory, Mark?" asked Twila. "Or do you think she was really a promiscuous gay man who was asking for it, too?"

"I'll leave that to the detectives," said Billings. "If you'll excuse me?


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> And on the other side of town...

Friday evening.

"But nothing turned up," Kate said. She was enjoying tea and a light meal at Casa Castle; Martha had insisted, when Kate called Alexis with the latest. "We 'll go back and show the picture of the second body around tomorrow. I hope someone recognizes her. After Lanie had more time she decided the woman either wasn't homeless or hadn't been very long. Her teeth were in good shape, she just hadn't changed clothes in a while. But no one has reported her missing, at least not in the Northeast."

"Her picture, umm, 'as is'?" asked Alexis.

"We have a cleaned-up picture of her body, and an artist's reconstruction."

"Can I see?"

Kate opened the file and showed both of them. Martha looked suddenly serious. "I wonder how she'd look with an up-do?" she said, almost to herself.

"You recognize her? There are an awful lot of older women-"

"I am one," said Martha, briefly. "A lot of my friends, and my friends' relatives, are also older women. And I very much doubt... but let me call Maisie and put my mind at ease."

Alexis and Kate exchanged baffled glances as Martha consulted a little address book. "Not someone I speak to that often," said Martha, keying the number. "Maisie? Martha Rodgers. I know, it has. How are you? Yes, me too. ... This is a strange thing to ask, but I suddenly wondered how your aunt was doing, the one on the Upper East Side? With the beautiful view? Alice was her name, I believe? No, I know you're busy. I just wondered. Yes. Yes, please do, call me back. No, really." Martha shut the phone off. "I am just being silly."

"Dad says he knows Wanytta Evans," said Alexis. "I liked her a lot."

"Your father knows everyone."

"Pretty much, yeah."

"Anyway, I liked her, too, and her alibi is solid. She was in northern New Hampshire all of last week."

"And Reverend 'Falwell's' alibi?" asked Martha.

"He's not that bad, Martha, he seems to be doing genuine good and everything we've checked out about him and his church has been clean, too."

"I Googled them, and the brother's community," said Alexis. "The women at Liberty Islamic don't have to wear headscarves. And they believe in evolution. It's on their website."

"And the Baptists, too?" asked Martha. "Almost thou persuadest me – oh, crap, sorry." She put her drink down as her phone broke into song. "Hi, Maisie. How is she?"

Kate could hear Maisie from across the coffee table. Maisie's aunt had not answered the phone. What was more alarming, apparently, was that her caregiver/housekeeper hadn't either, and the concierge hadn't seen either of them for the past week. "Well, they could have left town, couldn't they? The long weekend – no, Maisie, I am not calling you a foolish old woman. If you think it's not right of course you should call the super and see if anyone's in the apartment. Yes, I'll wait." Martha raised her eyes to Kate and Alexis. "Call waiting. Maisie's, not mine. Alice is a little older than Maisie and I, and not in very good health. Well, twenty years older and you can't say if she's any more demented than she ever was, but A Little Strange – Maisie? Please don't shout... . Hold on." Martha looked at Kate. "The superintendent says there's blood all over the entry hall."

"Tell your friend to call the police." Kate poured the rest of her coffee down her throat and put her shoes back on. "Tell her I'll be right there."

"We'll meet you at the apartment, Maisie. Remind me of the address? And Detective Beckett says you should call the police."

"We?" asked Alexis.

"Not you, just Kate. You've had your dead body for this week. Finish your sandwich, Kate, there's nothing to you. And eat your carrot sticks."

"Martha," Kate fumbled the carrot sticks into her coat pocket, "you don't need to come."

"Maisie needs me, I got her into this."

"You'll call me?" Alexis asked Kate.

"I will."

The apartment, despite the swanky building, was a mess. Anna Corcoran, the housekeeper, had been stabbed several times and then hit on the head. There were signs of a struggle, as the saying went: a hall table overturned, dishes broken in the kitchen, and a trail of blood leading to the body in the the second bedroom. "It looks like she was having coffee with someone-" Perlmutter waved toward the kitchen table.

"Tea," interrupted Ryan. There were two teabags lying dried-out in a saucer on the table.

"A distinction without a difference, Detective. Then someone, possibly the other person drinking TEA, stabbed her while she was at the sink. The victim fought back and ran toward her bedroom, where she might have been reaching for the phone when she was stabbed again, and hit with that." The medical examiner indicated a hunk of polished gray granite, possibly a bookend.

"Kitchen knife?"

"Probably; something long, anyway. I'll be able to give more details later."

Martha was trying to calm Maisie and the apartment super as they stood in the hall. "The co-op board is not going to be happy," muttered the supervisor. "Alice was never violent, more than a little strange, but not violent."

"Watch what you say about my aunt!" Maisie began.

"No one is saying anything about your aunt," said Martha. "Well, actually, we probably will. Maisie, Detective Beckett has an unidentified woman in her morgue, which was why I called you. The situation here doesn't make me feel any better."

"Why should my aunt be in a morgue?"

"That's what I hope to find out," said Beckett. "First, of course, we need to know if she really is your aunt. Are you Ms. Wainwright's only relative?"

"I think so, since my mother passed on, yes."

"Do you know if Ms. Corcoran had relatives?"

"Yes, she has a daughter in Queens somewhere."

Beckett mentioned that to Esposito as he began to look through the list of numbers thumb-tacked on the wall next to the telephone. "Does this person look like your aunt?" She showed Maisie the sketch-reconstruction of the old woman's face."

"Yes, she does... What's happened to her?"

Very late Friday night. Practically Saturday morning.

"Castle, how did you know I was awake?"

"Elementary, my dear detective. Your Gmail account told me."

"I feel surveilled."

"Less embarrassing than if I'd found you on Facebook. Alexis emailed to say you have another body, but she wasn't online when I got the message." Rick Castle was now in mid-morning Prague. It was some ridiculous time after midnight in New York when he called Kate.

"Yes. Well, two of them. Which was she talking about, the one in the back dirt pile or the one in the apartment?"

"I thought the one in the back dirt was a guy."

"Oh, that one was. This is the new body. Although Alexis may have been referring to the housekeeper, who is really the newest body." Kate listened in some satisfaction to Castle's surprise and anguish at missing it.

"What housekeeper?" Castle asked when his chagrin had calmed down.

"Anna Corcoran, who was the caregiver and companion of Alice Townsend Wainwright, the last daughter of a tobacco baron, who was in the back dirt pile. Your mother recognized her picture. What is it with your family and crime scenes?"

"My mother?"

Kate explained how Martha's friend Maisie McAllister had come to find her aunt's housekeeper messily dead. "We think she and her employer were killed about the same time, but in different places. Your mother was great. She stayed with her friend until the CSI people got to the apartment, and made her come down to identify her aunt's body. And made sure she got home all right."

" So yesterday you had one dead body, but no ID, and today you have three dead bodies, but you have IDs for all of them. Does that work out even? I wonder why the housekeeper didn't end up in the back dirt pile."

"She was killed in the apartment, with a knife, after a struggle and maybe a cup of tea. Wainwright was strangled, maybe on the spur of the moment? We're looking for a connection between the two women and Bankery, other than the back dirt, but there may not be one. Unfortunately none of Aunt Alice's family was in close touch with her." Kate cleared her throat. "She was a 'character' and scared her niece silly."

"She probably smoked cigarettes in public, or went to speakeasies. Went dancing in the wrong places with unfashionable people."

"Something like that. She dressed like a bag lady and went out a lot by herself. It's hard to find out much about her when her housekeeper was her closest friend, and she's dead too."

"And kind of sad. I like eccentric old ladies."

"You should come down to the Light of Christ Baptist shelter. Most of them were just sad and tired and ill, but there were a couple of 'eccentric' ones, too. One of them came in in a dirty white fake fur coat, dragging a Christmas tree, while I was there."

"Not really in season, was it?"

"Fake fur is never out of season. And now I am going to go home and catch some sleep. What are you up to today?"

"I'm doing a signing at one of the places they plotted the Velvet Revolution. Great coffee."

Saturday, October 25

Beckett met with her team. With three corpses on her hands, the department allowed her some extra staff. "At least we have an ID for the woman now."

"None of the pictures we have show her dressed the way she was when we found her," said Esposito. "I asked the artists to come up with something, with the shorter hair and no makeup."

"Her apartment..." said Karpowski, words failing. "She and her housekeeper could probably qualify for some kind of genteel hoarding disorder. I went through as much of her stuff as I could, talked to one of the neighbors. Wainwright liked to go out and pretend to be a homeless woman; the neighbor said she claimed to be working on a book, to be called something like Down and Out and Too Old to Die. There was a computer that got beat up in the struggle – IT is looking at it-, but I found a pile of notebooks written in turquoise fountain pen under Wainwright's bed. I'll see if I can make anything of them."

"We need to look at those. And we canvass all the shelters. Beginning with the Light of Christ Baptist Mission," said Beckett. "Esposito, I want Joe Bankery's practicum notes, whatever we can get from his social work classes. And while you're on campus, talk to people in the history department and see if Bankery rings anyone's bells."

"Of course I know Joe Bankery," said the secretary of the New York College History Department. "He took 'Ethnicity in America, 1600-1964' two semesters ago. Sweet guy."

"Who taught that, please?" asked Esposito, taking notes as fast as he could.

"Dr. Werkowski, of course."

Esposito called Beckett. "Bring him in," she told him.

Back in the precinct, in an interrogation room. "Dr. Werkowski, why did you say you didn't know Joseph Bankery?" Beckett asked.

"I have a lot of students."

"The department secretary remembers him very well," said Esposito.

"She has a talent."

"She also says he's been around your office several times since the course ended," Esposito said.

Werkowski continued not to say anything.

"And the barista at the coffeehouse across Washington Square saw you having coffee last month," said Esposito.

" There could be a lot of good reasons for you to be meeting with a social work student, I understand," Kate said. "But those wouldn't keep you from discussing him, would they?"

Werkowski shifted uneasily in his seat.

"What I don't understand, Dr. Werkowski, is if you killed him, why you buried him in your own excavation," said Beckett. "And what did the two old ladies do to you?"

"I didn't kill him. And I don't know anything about the dead old ladies."

"Good. What aren't you telling us?"

"My wife … my wife knows I'm kinda bi."

"Does she?"

"Well..."

"Was Joseph threatening you in any way?" Esposito asked.

"No! No, we were...friends."

"Really good friends?" asked Beckett.

"I guess so... Is there any way we can keep this quiet?"

"If we can make sure you were not involved with either of the dead bodies we found on your excavation site, then probably yes. We need your full cooperation, and we haven't been getting it, " Beckett told him. The two detectives stared at the professor for a few moments. He was just short of squirming. "Does anyone know you and the victim were seeing each other?"

"God, I hope not. It isn't just my wife... he was a student. Tenure means nothing if they catch you screwing a student. We didn't start till after the class was over but I don't know if the administration would believe that."

"So you stood to lose your job if the affair became widely known?"

"Maybe. Maybe not. He was one of the grad students, not a kid. It was stupid of me, but I really liked him. I wouldn't have killed him. And like you say, I would never have buried him on my site. But the spoil heap is a terrible place to put a body; no one who knows anything about archaeology would think it was safe. For one thing, we'll be excavating underneath it if we get time."

"Would your wife?" asked Esposito.

Werkowski looked genuinely surprised. "I don't think so. She'd be more likely to divorce me with extreme prejudice. And bury ME on the site."

They let him go with the usual caution not to leave town. "I have Joseph's practicum notes, not that his professor was too happy about breaking client confidentiality," Esposito said.

"You want to go through them, or hand them over to Karpowski? See if they talked about any of the same issues, or people?"

"At least the practicum notes are typed," said Esposito. "I got e-file copies, too, she could try to search them."

Beckett went back to the mission, with photographs of the dead women in better times. McElroy was horrified. "Yes, I knew Alice Wainwright. She never looked like that at the fundraisers. You've met her, Mark, maybe a couple of years ago?"

Billings looked sad. "Such a generous woman. I remember talking to her last spring. She bought the new refrigeration unit."

"She was apparently around more often than you thought," said Beckett. "Twila Garfield recognized her picture as a client. Said she seemed sweet and fragile and only half-there."

"She must have had her reasons," said McElroy. "Could you get me in touch with her niece? I want to offer my sympathies and see what's going on about a funeral."

Beckett promised to let Maisie know he wanted to help. "Is there any register, some kind of record of the people you shelter? I'd like to try to find out when she was last here."

"We have the night logs, but not everyone wants to sign in," said Billings. No one named Wainwright was recorded, but there were three Alices in the past four months. Beckett found herself interviewing a very old woman in Russian, who was fairly certain she had seen Wainwright within the last month, and some others who thought they remembered her. But even with an artist's sketch of Alice Wainwright in short messy hair, wrinkles, and no makeup, it was hard to feel confident of any of the ID. Beckett paused at the pastor's office to tell him she was leaving. "I'll come back this evening and talk to your night crew."

"Detective, do you want to search this place?" McElroy asked.

"I don't have grounds for a warrant, Reverend."

"That's why I'm asking whether you would like to. I'll give you permission in writing if you want. Be my guest."

"You're either innocent or amazingly arrogant, sir."

"Way I see it, you have two dead people and my church links them together. I don't like it. Old-fashioned that way."


	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The crows come home to roost, and eventually so does Castle.

Saturday afternoon

"So Werkowski has a motive to kill Bankery," Castle said late that afternoon (in New York) from Copenhagen (in the middle of the night).

"But not for Wainwright or Corcoran."

"You could go back and try to find another corpse and prove coincidence. Maybe the city should sponsor a 'dead body drop-off center.' It's not fair to the archaeologists to have to take them all."

"How much would the city be able to charge? Would it take up parking spaces?"

"Would it be city-wide or just by borough?"

"This isn't helping," Kate said firmly.

"The city needs all the revenue it can get."

"Not alone in that, either."

"So..." said Rick after a minute, "Who gets Aunt Alice's money? Or Corcoran's, for that matter? Would McElroy kill the goose who laid the golden refrigeration unit?"

"We've called Maisie and asked about that. She didn't know, promised to get us in touch with the lawyer. By the way, your mother should go into business as some kind of grief counselor. Maisie couldn't stop saying how much help she was."

"Mom does love running people's lives. Nice to see her channelling it for good rather than, well, me. By the way, do you want anything with the statue of the Little Mermaid on it?"

"More of a Beauty and the Beast girl, here."

"That's not Anderson. I'll look for something Ugly Duckling. Karpowski come up with anything from those book-notes? Was there something going on at Light of Christ someone didn't want published?"

"The pastor says he has nothing to hide. So Ryan and a couple of uniforms are looking as we speak. I have to take another call, Castle. Later?" Kate put the cell phone aside. She listened to the other phone and said, "Send her up."

"Mrs. McAllister called me and told me to cooperate," said Aunt Alice's lawyer, handing Beckett a sheaf of paper. "She is the executrix and primary legatee. I handled Mrs. Corcoran's affairs, as well, but I think you'll be more interested in Ms. Wainwright's bequest of three million dollars to the Light of Christ Baptist Fellowship Mission non-profit corporation."

"Some might consider that a motive," said Ryan.

The lawyer shook her head. "I have been on the board of the mission for the past two years, and I have never had any reason to doubt their probity. They are not in financial trouble now. I'm sure the treasurer would be happy to show you the books."

"Did Ms. Wainwright ever speak to you about establishing a foundation of her own?" Esposito asked. "The notes for her book seem to show she was thinking of something less kinda faith-based."

"You're good," the lawyer said. "We had been discussing it, yes. We had an appointment for this week, in fact. She wanted me to meet a social worker she had been considering to help set it up."

"His name might have been Joseph Bankery?" asked Beckett.

"She didn't say, but it was someone from New York College."

 

"Oh, yes, I remember her," said the barista. "She and that guy had coffee here a few times. I sort of thought she was his grandmother, except he was a lot darker than she was, you know?"

"Can you remember the last time you saw them, Ms. Gomez?" asked Beckett.

The barista made one of those 'Mmm, thinking very hard' faces, with the accompanying whistling noise. "Okay. It was before we had the Columbus Day special, I know that. She had all these ideas for a 'Colonialism Special.' I remember before that she was trying to come up with 'something wobbly' for Labor Day. I didn't see the connection but she's nice and a good tipper. It must have been a couple of weeks ago I last saw her."

"Have you seen Bankery since then?"

"Once. He was waiting for her but she didn't show. He called her his 'fairy godmother.'"

 

"I wonder if I should have told Candace to watch her back," said Beckett. "She's shaping up as an important witness."

"I'd like something a little stronger to tie Wainwright and Bankery together," said Esposito. "Have we gone through all the papers in both apartments? Anything at his place in turquoise ink?"

"We haven't found his cell phone, and she didn't have one," said Beckett. "We have a request in to her phone company now. But she was planning to leave three million dollars to the place he was working, for sure, and we think maybe she was going to change some plans and leave a substantial sum to some other place. I wonder if McElroy knew about that?"

"That she was leaving his church money, or that she planned to give some to someone else? We don't know that she was planning to take anything away from the bequest to the mission. She had eight mil and change, remember," said Esposito

"If he knew either of those things, it would be a motive. I want to go back to Light of Christ with some of those notes you found, Esposito, and see if we could identify some of the people Wainwright was interviewing. Subpoena the non-profit's records, and get a look at his bank account. I'm going to go and join Ryan, see if anything's shaken loose."

 

Saturday night outside the Light of Christ Mission was a happening place. Well-off tourists and suburbanites; homeless and weird; homeless and sad; and among the rest, the normal New Yorkers trying to walk around and past everyone else as quickly as possible. The night crew at the shelter was dealing with a crowd as the season's bitterest cold blew in. Beckett and Ryan tried to interview them in pockets of downtime, but Wainwright's colorless old-lady persona had left little impression behind. "She was good at undercover," Ryan said. They had left the shelter area and were in the pastor's office.

"She must have been, indeed," Pastor McElroy agreed. "But then we aren't usually expecting millionaires in disguise. So trite." He shook his head. "I talked to her at least a few minutes a couple of times a year at our benefits. She suggested Diana Webber – you've met the lawyer?- for our board. That's one bright woman. Hate to have her on the other side."

Kate nodded. "Did you know Ms. Wainwright had remembered you in her will?"

"No, but I can't say as I'm surprised. She's been a good friend to us while she was alive." There was a knock on the office door. Mark Billings came inside. He looked surprised to see the detectives, though there was a uniformed officer behind him.

"Jim, did you really tell the police they were welcome to go through everyone's apartments?"

"I had more in mind the public spaces, but I did say the whole building. You have anything to hide, Mark?"

The associate pastor pursed his lips. "No more than anyone else, but I wish you had warned me."

"Of course you aren't obliged to let us search, Reverend Billings." Kate hoped she sounded more threatening than she had any right to. "We don't have probable cause for a warrant."

"Good. I have to question your authority to do this, Jim, our clients have rights."

"I don't see 'em being strip-searched, do you? Have you been roughing up our visitors?" the pastor asked the uniformed man.

"No, sir, we haven't. Detective Beckett just asked us to look around all the rooms and storage areas to see if there was anything that seemed out of place."

"Was there anything, Demaris?" Beckett asked.

"Not really, sir, no blood stains. An awful lot of garbage bags in the back alley."

"I knew it," said McElroy. "I told you to tell Roger not to take that wall out till we got a Dumpster. Renovations on the top floor, Detective."

"We're putting out one bag every garbage pickup," said Billings.

"You could be ticketted for improper disposal of building debris," said Ryan. "No bodies in the bags?"

"You might want to get Housman and have a look," Kate said to the uniform. He looked mutely horrified and left. Ryan glanced at Beckett for permission and went along with him. "Sometimes people try to get rid of problems in someone else's trash."

"Any problem with that, Mark?" McElroy asked. Billings shrugged, started to leave. "Did you know Miss Alice Wainwright was leaving us money?"

"I think she mentioned it, yes," muttered Billings.

"Really? Do you remember when?" Beckett asked. He shrugged again. Beckett continued,"I wish you had told us you'd seen her around, looking like one of your homeless people."

"She liked her privacy," said Billings. Beckett wondered if McElroy knew he'd been conned; Billings had just changed his story from seeing Wainwright 'last year at a fundraiser.'

"You could have told me, too," said the pastor. "Did you have any idea what she was up to? Kind of a crazy thing to do, pretend to be a bag lady."

"'The Lord is near to the broken-hearted.' I just assumed she wanted to know more about the unfortunates she was helping."

"Any of our other patrons does that, you'll let me know, all right?" asked his employer. Billings nodded.

"So when did you last see her?" prodded Beckett.

"A week or two ago, I'm not sure."

"Did anyone else know she was around?"

"I doubt it."

"So you didn't see her talking to anyone in particular? Anyone on the staff? I was wondering about Joe Bankery."

"Really, Detective, I wasn't trying to keep an eye on her."

"I'm surprised, given how protective you are of your clientele."

"She was hardly a threat to anyone! I'm sorry, Miss Beckett, but I haven't always known the police to be as concerned for our homeless as you would like us to think you are."

"Then you didn't know she was writing a book about them? Down and Out and Too Old to Die? I'm told the notes are very good."

It seemed to be a surprise to both men. McElroy looked pleased, perhaps indulgent; Billings looked furious. "An abuse of our confidence!"

"I don't know, Mark, she was backing us. If she'd asked me, I'd've hoped she protected individuals' privacy, but a nice book by a socialite? Could have done a lot of good." McElroy turned to Beckett. "Can we see it?"

"The notes belong to her heirs," Kate said. "When Mrs. McAllister has had time to adjust to her loss, I'm sure you can ask." If we ever get done with it. "I haven't seen any of it, myself. I'm just surprised she didn't ask any of the staff for their input."

Ryan put his head into the office, raised his eyebrows at her.

"Excuse me, gentlemen." Beckett followed Ryan through a maze of hallways to a back door, where, as she had been told, there were an awful lot of tied black garbage sacks. Perhaps a third of them were to one side, opened, exhaling plaster dust. "This would have taken them a year of get rid of."

"Nine and a half months, we thought, with two pickups a week," said Ryan. "Would you look at this?"

"At what?"

"There's something sticky all over a lot of them," said Demaris. Ryan held up his handkerchief, a brownish smudge over half of it.

"Don't tell me you put it in your mouth."

"Hey," said Ryan. "You yelled at me enough that one time. But I don't like the way it smells."

Beckett took the handkerchief and sniffed.

"It could be blood. Get a CSI over here." She might not have a life, but she was out late Saturday night at the happening place. Whatever it was had happened, when, to whom, with what…..

 

Sunday, October 24

"It's blood, it's human, it's Joe Bankery's type. Anything more will take longer," Lanie said. She sounded excited through the telephone. Kate fought down her own rising hopes.

"Long way to go."

"But you can get a warrant now."

"Oh yes. On that already. Thank you so much, Lanie." Kate hadn't had enough sleep by any standard other than a cop's, but the game was afoot. Instead of lying comatose, like a body in a spoil heap. She could stop kicking it. She hurried to the precinct and found that Karpowski had apparently worked through the night. A neat pile of printout lay on Kate's desk with a note: "I've e-mailed you the transcription, which is still pretty rough – ought to have formatted it in turquoise – like having SNL-version Julia Child in my head – what you want is here on top – I should be in by noon. Karpowski."

Kate picked up the pages and skimmed the first few. It was a business plan, or a non-profit plan, with goals – 'to serve the elderly homeless or those at risk of homelessness by providing dignified, secular, medical, clothing, food, and housing assistance' as well as a social center for the better-off and bored older men and women of New York. The idea was to network those who still had 'pull' with those who did not- and a list of people Wainwright intended to contact as she formed a board and an actual staff. Joseph Bankery's name was on the list.

Esposito came in, also with a pile of paper: Bankery's comments about Wainwright's plans, with bibliographic references. "I wonder if he was going to submit this for a grade?"

"Well, now there's more than Candace Gomez to tie them together, but still, why kill either of them? Let alone Corcoran? Have they ID'd any interesting fingerprints from the apartment-ideally the bookend?"

"I'll find out," Esposito promised. "Ryan is over at the mission with the warrant and a bunch more guys."

"If you're going to Forensics, would you take these?" Beckett handed him the manila folder with the pictures of Wainwright she had shown around at the mission. "I labelled whose prints should be on which sheet-protector."

"You really think McElroy did it?"

"He doesn't set off my creep detector, but we know it's not infallible. I'd just like to rule him out. I'd like to rule anyone out."

Karpowski came in, yawning. "Wainwright's apartment super called and wants to know when he can rent their apartment."

"Less than a week since we found blood all over it... Ask him if he thinks people would prefer it haunted or not," Beckett suggested.

"Ooh, ghosts of unavenged victims?"

"If you want, Karpowski, but I was thinking of ghoulish profiteers. Is CSI finished over there?"

"I'm going back over there with them now and make sure I found all the notebooks."

"Seems like you squeezed the ones you had pretty dry."

Karpowski wrinkled her nose. "I think I'm having an EID moment. I really want her shelter to get off the ground. When's Castle coming back?"

Kate tried to recall. "Wednesday, I think. EID?"

"'Emotionally-Involved Detective,' my friend at the Second Precinct said. Let me know if Ryan or anyone comes up with something?"

"Believe me, I will." Alone for a moment, Beckett studied her whiteboard.   
Victim 1) Joe Bankery, of the New York College School of Social Work, knew   
Victim 2) Alice Wainwright, of Old Money; they had the Light of Christ Mission in common, and the unrealized elders' shelter. And Josh Werkowski's pile of back dirt. ('Had the professor been sleeping with Wainwright as well as the student?' she heard Castle asking. Awful man. No. Beckett couldn't tell if this was her famed detective-y instincts at work or just a sense that Wainwright was too good as well as too old for Werkowski.) It seemed most likely that their murders were connected through their interest in the homeless. Wainwright was killed before Bankery. So was   
Victim 3, Anna Corcoran, the housekeeper, out in a corner of the whiteboard by herself. Appeared to be a victim of circumstance. Killed for being in Wainwright's apartment? Killed before or after her employer?  
'Could it be a coincidence?' asked the devil's advocate. Nonsense. The apartment had not been robbed. Apart from the mess in the kitchen caused by Corcoran and the murderer struggling, nothing had been wrong.

Except the computer had been stomped. Who keeps a computer in the kitchen? The cook. Kitchen was a common space but not a formal one; a computer would have looked out of place in the living room. It looked as though the housekeeper and the socialite watched TV together. Had they shared the computer?   
Kate called IT. They reported that it seemed to be mainly Corcoran who had used it, keeping in close touch with her children and grandchildren and IMDB. Maisie McAllister had said she thought her aunt was about as technical as she was herself, which was several years behind Martha Rodgers. Somewhere around Windows 98. So whoever tried (ineffectively) to silence the hard drive had been on the wrong track. Which made the stack of notebooks in turquoise ink the likely target, and led back to the homeless shelter. Shelters.

Someone knew Corcoran well enough to be let into the apartment? Someone got into the apartment with Wainwright's key? Had they found Wainwright's key? Nope. The staticky mess on the security tapes had yielded one unidentified figure leaving in the early evening on the day Lainie said was likely the day of the murders. A figure of average height wearing a hooded sweatshirt (it appeared to say NYPD on it, a piece of irony Castle might have enjoyed more than Kate did). Check McElroy's alibi for that time period, assuming anyone remembered almost two weeks earlier. McElroy was too beefy for that figure. Who else had motive? Billings? He was very protective of the mission. He was not too tall or wide. Ask Ryan to find out if he owned a hooded sweatshirt. Check Billing's alibi. Check their shoes for distinctive archaeological dirt, if any. Why the hell didn't the victims leave a detailed explanation of their movements and motives with someone before they were killed? Why stick two of them in a back-dirt pile? Because there was no Dumpster handy at the mission? Neither of the victims had been very heavy; Wainwright might have weighed ninety pounds soaking wet and Bankery had been slightly built and well under six feet tall. How strong was Billings?

Beckett stared at the whiteboard for a while and looked outside. It was still light, not raining.

When she parked outside the dig, she could see it was in full operation, seven bundled-up people in the pit either trowelling or taking pictures; one pushing a wheelbarrow up the side of the spoil heap.

"Hey," said Wanyyta, having dumped the wheelbarrow. "Anything I can do, Detective?"

"Did you move that thing again?" asked Kate, waving at the pile of dirt.

"Not all of it," said Wanyyta. "But we had your guys with the shovels and they seemed to want to be useful after your ME went after them, so we moved it farther from the edge. If nothing else, no one paying attention will think it's a good place to hide a corpse, not for very long. Do you want to come in, see some of our bodies?"

"Only if they died peacefully," Kate said, but she came in and admired the current grave. Inside the site hut, Wanyyta showed her a case of paper bags- tough ones, like lawn-and-leaf- ("Plastic keeps the moisture in, makes the bones deteriorate. Paper helps them stay a little more stable.") filled with the carefully documented bones recovered in the past few days.

"This one here, we think he died of an infection he got after he broke his leg. It was pretty easy to tell even though he hasn't been cleaned up."

"Nasty."

"It must have been. This job is making us all big fans of antibiotics."

"What happens to them next?" Kate asked.

"They go back to a lab, they get cleaned, photographed, measured, sampled, and maybe by Black History Month in a year or two they get re-interred. How about yours?"

"Pretty much the same, except ours have names and they'll probably be released for burial in another week. And we have soft-tissue evidence, but no grave goods."

"Still no idea who killed them?"

"Idea, yes; evidence, not yet. You mentioned people paying attention; do you get many spectators?"

"Well, we have the tours on Saturday mornings and Monday afternoons, if people show up. And we do get people just watching us on their way past. More when we were working closer to the fence, of course."

"Any regulars you would recognize?'

"Oh, yes, of course. Hat Man comes by around ten a.m. on Tuesdays and Thursdays, a couple of others. There's a stockbroker who brings coffee on Friday afternoons."

Kate pulled out a sheaf of pictures, a kind of a portable lineup. Not all of them were involved in this case. "Any of these people look familiar?" She and Wanyyta walked around with the photos to each of the archaeologists, but no one picked any of the faces out.

"Sorry, Detective. "

"Better than making things up," Kate said. "Next time I'll bring doughnuts. Or maybe pizza?"

"They'd perjure themselves for pizza," said Wanyyta. "Come anytime."

Kate proceeded to the Light of Christ Mission, where Ryan and five other officers were looking systematically for anything. "Nothing," Ryan reported. "Although one of the older homeless guys has a nice stash of pot in his sleeping bag. Claims it's for his glaucoma." Kate caught part of a Sunday service. She felt she was an ominous figure, standing at the back of the big room being used as a chapel. It was not to her taste and she left again, turned to go back to her precinct.

"You want coffee, Detective?" It was one of the women Kate had met working in the kitchen.

"Mrs. Garfield? Sure, thanks, if you're offering."

They sat in a little room, off the kitchen where the dishwashers were running flat out and something steamed from a big pot. Twila kept an eye on it from her chair. "Second dinner's coming up in an hour, I get a chance to sit down."

"It looks like a big responsibility."

"It's not too bad, when we have enough help... So do you you anything, some good clues? to go on, Detective?"

"Some ideas," said Kate. "What do you think?"

"Ah," Twila shook her head. "I'm afraid it was somebody here."

"You are?"

"There isn't much in the paper, which I know Jim McElroy is grateful for. But even we can see the mission is all that Joey and Alice Wainwright had in common. She was worth an awful lot of money. And he wasn't."

"Do you think Joey might have had something to do with Ms. Wainwright's death? And someone else killed him for it?"

"You have a great imagination, Detective. Actually, I thought maybe it was the other way around. More likely Joey found out something about Alice Wainwright's death and mentioned it to the wrong person."

"Blackmail?" Kate fished.

"No! If you had ever met him-"

"I'm sorry," said Kate. "Do you have any ideas at all who might fit into that scheme?"

Twila hesitated. "Not really. No. But it hasn't been right, here. There's something tense in the air."

"You have a bunch of police officers going through your building and asking intrusive questions, of course there's tension. And blood all over the back yard."

"They were here measuring all the knives, too. I hope you find something soon."

 

Sunday afternoon

"I'll be back the day after tomorrow," Castle said from Poland.

"I wish I thought it would be over by then." Kate was back at her office. "We turned that place over and found nothing."

"Blood all over those garbage bags-"

"And nothing in them. They got rid of the knife someplace else, and it's been raining."

"Whoever killed Bankery must have had blood all over his clothes."

"And whoever killed the cook. But it's been over a week; how many incinerators, how many Dumpsters have been emptied? It really hurts when you don't have a crime scene."

"You have one. A fairly nasty one, if my mother is any judge."

"And we're going over it again. And again. Karpowski was taking the garbage apart the last time I spoke to her." Beckett sighed.

"Well, tell me again. The only motive you have is Wainwright's money going to the Light of Christ Mission."

"Right. But why kill her now? They're not in trouble; they just could have waited. And that doesn't explain Bankery."

"Joe Bankery knew Wainwright was thinking of setting up another shelter. Would he kill Wainwright to keep the money going to Light of Christ?"

"Not according to anyone who knew him," said Kate. "Besides, he would not have killed her if he and she were about to set up another shelter with a job for him, right?"

"So maybe they were both killed by someone who wanted to protect Light of Christ's interests?"

"Which would be McElroy, but I doubt it, or Billings."

"You don't like Billings," said Castle.

"I don't think anyone likes Billings. It doesn't make him a murderer. Although he could possibly be the unidentified figure in Wainwright's apartment building tapes, which McElroy could not."

"They could both be in on it."

"True. Or more likely, neither of them. Everything I can come up with is possible, circumstantial. I can't see even trying to indict him."

"Damn," said Castle. There was a minute of expensive satellite silence. "I hate stories like this."

"I hate cases like this."

"I bet it's the archaeologists."

"Least likely suspects? No motive? No known acquaintance with the dead woman? Very protective of their spoil heap?"

"Take them pizza; maybe someone will confess."

She was not in the mood to take the damp archaeologists pizza. The white board obstinately refused to light up, or swim over with letters of gold forming a clever acrostic that revealed the culprit. Wainwright's three faces – in 1952, late 2004, and last week –looked at her reproachfully. In Corcoran's picture, the housekeeper sat with a grandchild on each knee. Bankery, in a picture taken the day he received his BA, looked like he was barely out of high school. Kate looked back at them. Kind faces. Lively faces, as they had not been when she saw them. "I'm working on it," Kate told them. "I wish you'd all talked more to your friends."

Kate went over to the Wainwright/Corcoran apartment. There were two CSI people there, and Karpowski. She and a tech had spread a plastic sheet on the kitchen floor, and they were dissecting the kitchen garbage-can contents.

"Garbology? I should have brought one of the archaeologists," Kate muttered.

"Look for a rim, would you? White bone china with a gold stripe. Jannie here got me started putting the china back together."

"There was one saucer on the table, and a cup and a saucer broken on the floor," explained Jannie the tech. "Someone threw the pieces of the cup away. I swear to God, they wiped them for prints. I think somebody went over the table and chair, too. We found the knife we think Corcoran was stabbed with washed and in the drainer. Cool sonofabitch."

"No prints on the bookend?" Karpowski asked. "How about the dishwashing liquid?"

"Nice," said Jannie. "But no, and not on the spray cleaner, either. Or the sink. Some of the victim's blood on the dishtowel."

"And you've gone through this, garbage, coffee grinds? Former lettuce? how many times, looking for your missing piece?" Kate asked.

"Maybe three," said Karpowski.

"Five," said the tech.

"You think maybe it's not here?" asked Karpowski. " 'Cause I am not sure I can deal with going through this stuff again."

"I take it you've looked everywhere else?" Kate asked.

"Not more than a couple of times."

"Be my guest," said Jannie.

Kate looked at the small, somewhat old-fashioned kitchen. "Can we move the refrigerator?"

"Already did, but it's worth a try," said Jannie. The refrigerator was one of very few Kate had ever encountered with working wheels, and it gimballed along easily. There was a patch of dusty floor where it had stood, but no china. Kate got down and looked underneath with a penlight.

"Can we tilt it? No, I guess I mean the other way?"

"Harrison? Can you come in here?" the CSI tech called her colleague. "We want the fridge on its back. Or its front."

Harrison was built not unlike the refrigerator. They tipped it – it had been emptied already – into his arms and he lowered it gently onto its face. A piece of curved white china glistened in the undercarriage.

"Damn," said Karpowski. "Evidence bag? Powder?" Jannie dusted it carefully, blew away the excess powder. Whorls and loops lay revealed.

"Fingerprint," said Jannie, as they looked with great satisfaction.

"I'll buy the beer," said Karpowski.

"Conviction, or just arrest?" asked the tech.

"Arrest should do it," said Kate. "You would have found it eventually."

"Sweet of you to say," Jannie answered.

 

"Am I Martha Stewart? Am I Sherlock Holmes?" caroled Karpowski as she danced out of the elevator.

"Are you?" asked Esposito.

"We got a fingerprint!"

"Where? Whose?"

"Broken tea cup in the kitchen. Someone who said he was never there."

"The Reverend Mark Billings," said Kate. She called Ryan, still at the mission. "Bring him in."

Billings did not come quietly; he made enough noise to frighten the older and crazier in the shelter. McElroy seemed to lose twenty pounds and gain twenty years as Ryan watched him.

"Like when you tell someone someone's died," Ryan said. "He told Billings to quiet down and remember the mission, but Billings just shouted he wasn't going to put up with this intimidation. He wanted a lawyer." Ryan and the other uniforms had brought Billings back to the station; McElroy came with him.

"I'm sorry," Beckett found herself telling the pastor. She gave him coffee while they waited for the lawyer. A good lawyer, a friend of the mission. He would have his work cut out.

"I hope he's not guilty," McElroy said. "I hope you're wrong, Detective, sorry to make your life harder."

"Innocent until proven otherwise," Kate said. "But the evidence is not in his favor."

"We worked pretty well together, years ago. Less easy these days. I think he was burning out, but I didn't want to tell him to either take a break or leave. A very proud man."

 

"I miss everything," Castle complained. "I would have loved to see that." He called Monday afternoon, after Beckett had told his mother and daughter all of the news.

"Karpowski would happy-dance for you. She wants you to get Aunt Alice's shelter up and running. Get her book published."

"I have a lot of money, but I don't have that kind of money. But I imagine between my mother and her friends and some of mine, and maybe some of Alexis's, we might be able to do something."

"I think Maisie McAllister will do most of the heavy lifting. She's feeling really guilty she didn't know her aunt better. Karpowski has a crush on the vic and keeps telling McAllister how Wainwright was like Mother Teresa with a journalism degree."

"And radically different finances. How are they taking it at the mission?" Castle asked.

"I haven't been down there, but Ryan says they seem remarkably okay with it. I don't think Billings was as kind to his colleagues as he was to his clients."

"Is Billings still claiming he barely knew Wainwright?"

"That fingerprint made it a lot harder to deny he knew her better than he had said. It turned out he had visited her apartment a couple of times, seeing her home once he realized they had a benefactor among the bag ladies. He was aware she wanted to get a secular shelter started. He's still trying to say she stumbled one night when he was seeing her home. He tried to catch her and strangled her 'by accident.' But I think he realized she would be redirecting some of her generosity away from his church, and he didn't like it."

"And buried her on the archaeological site 'by accident?'"

"He says he panicked. Carried the vic to his car and put her in the spoil heap before he even knew what he was doing. He said the gate was open, but I think getting the body under the fence caused some of the post-mortem injuries."

"Weirdest 'fight-or-flight' response I ever heard of."

"He really, really doesn't trust cops. He thought we would make it it look worse than it was. And of course we did. But he couldn't explain why, after he hid Wainwright's body, he ended up at her apartment. Something about talking to her housekeeper. He swears Corcoran attacked him when she realized Wainwright wasn't coming back, but he's kind of vague on why she might have done that."

"Kamikaze Housekeeper Syndrome."

"After that," Beckett continued, "he was really a mess. He found some old sweats of Corcoran's, dumped his clothes in the apartment incinerator and took off. He said Bankery noticed him arriving back at the shelter and became suspicious because Billings was not a hoodie-wearing kind of guy. When Wainwright didn't respond to his phone calls, Billings said Bankery tried to blackmail him. Billings was trying to deal with this as 'discreetly' – his word- as he could, but he says Bankery kept threatening him. Oh, and there were no withdrawals from Billings' bank account to pay off these alleged demands."

"And then finally Billings stabbed him, by accident?" Castle asked.

"Right. Outside, in the rain, late at night, and getting rid of those clothes, too. " Kate thought she could see the expression that Castle must have had on his face.

"Has he switched his plea to insanity yet?"

"Not yet. I think McElroy and the lawyer are trying to suggest it to him." Kate shook her head. "I don't know if insanity will fly. He was very careful, cleaning up after himself."

"You were even more careful. Nice job. I'm sorry I missed it."

"There will be others. It wasn't really weird enough for you," Kate said. She wondered why she was bothering to try to cheer him up.

"With bodies dumped in a historic graveyard? With the fairy godmother disguised a bag lady?"

"And found by an innocent little-red haired girl."

"Of course. All us Castles are innocent. What's that choking sound?"

"I don't think you were ever innocent.'

"Hey."

"Besides, you were on an important mission, bringing her back chocolate from beyond the sea."

"I'm bringing back enough chocolate for ten people, my publisher here said. And some weird lollipops for Esposito and Ryan."

"TEN? Who are these people? How do you keep track?"

"Well, my publisher here is a guy. I figure if Alexis and my mother and you eat about three times as much chocolate as any normal male, I should be all right."

"Oh. Me? I'm not sure I want you to class me with your mother and your daughter."

"It's in my interest to keep you full of phenethylamine," Castle told her. "For some reason when you get abusive I seem to be a target."

"So you think I can be bought?"

"Appeased is a much nicer word. Pre-emptive appeasement. Because, as you keep telling me, you have a gun, and I don't."

"And why do you think I'm likely to be abusing you sometime soon?"

"Any more than usual? We have an interview on public-access cable next week together, talking about crime detection in fiction and real life. Didn't Montgomery tell you?"

Kate made a small noise.

"Lily Moskowitz is better than most interviewers," Castle assured her. "You'll have fun."

She freighted her words with as much menace as she could manage. "There had better be caramel."

"And cherries, and nougat. And almond paste."

"I'll let you know, Castle. I'm not easy."

"I have never thought that, no matter how much I might have -"

"What?"

"Nothing," Castle told her. "Until tomorrow, Detective."

 

She met Alexis at the airport the next day, waiting outside Customs. There was enough chocolate for all of Homicide. "You're insane," Kate told him.  
"Just sweet on you," Castle said. "Toblerone?"


End file.
